On view from March 24 through August 19, 2018, Dr. Manthorne’s exhibition places Newark’s renowned collection of 19th-century landscape painting in dialogue with European alpine painting of the same period.
Focusing on the 1830s to the 1870s, a critical period when artists, scientists, sight-seers and armchair travelers on both continents were awakening to the attractions of the mountains, The Rockies and the Alps showcases finished masterworks and plein air sketches by some of America’s most celebrated landscape artists: Albert Bierstadt, Worthington Whittredge, Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, John Singer Sargent, and others—along with breathtaking alpine views by the leader of the Swiss alpine school of painting, Alexandre Calame, and other revered European landscape painters such as J. M. W. Turner and John Ruskin.
Offering a uniquely international perspective on the rise of alpine painting, The Rockies and the Alps brings together approximately 70 rarely exhibited works drawn from the Newark Museum’s permanent collection and from distinguished private collections and museums around the country. With thematic galleries highlighting literature, natural science, technology and tourism, the exhibition will illuminate important connections between the explorations and international travels of 19th-century artists and the invention of photography, the rise of mountain climbing, and the proliferation of landscape imagery as part of mass culture.
Katherine Manthorne is Professor of Art of the United States, Latin America, and Their Cross-Currents, 1750-1950 at the CUNY Graduate Center.
